This article is reprinted from the September 28, 2016 issue of CHALLENGE. Although September 9, 1971, marks the beginning of the Attica Prison Rebellion, this month we commemorate Black August, a holiday honoring the bravery and sacrifice of the Attica prisoners, as well as the bold and militant leadership of Black workers from the prison galleys to the streets around the world, fighting against the imperialist system and its violently racist policies.

Today, the U.S. imprisons more workers than any other country in the world. More than 2 million-primarily working-class blacks-are incarcerated. This is a 500% increase since 1973, equivalent to 5% of the world’s population (American Civil Liberties Union). This is no accident; mass incarceration is one of the racist tools used by the bosses to solve the crisis of their declining system. The rulers use prisons to extract racist super-profits from the near enslavement of black workers, while maintaining a surplus of marginalized unemployed workers whom they deprive of benefits and jobs. More importantly, the rulers use prisons as a means of crushing black worker revolutionary potential and the unity of the working class.

The exponential growth of mass incarceration was the result of the U.S. rulers’ manufactured war on drugs, which they saw as their solution to the Black worker-led rebellions of the 1960s and 1970s. With the rise of racist murders of workers in prisons - from Rikers Island in New York to the Elmore County jail in Alabama - the Attica jail rebellion remains tragically relevant. Liberal rulers are trying to scare working people into voting Democratic with the prospect of a Trump presidency and Project 2025. The mass incarceration policies they warn are coming with Project 2025 are already here, thanks to a long list of Democrats, including Big Fascists Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Then as now black workers remain central to working-class liberation as the key fighting force for communist revolution.

Not only are conditions worse today than they were during Attica,… Attica once again…. is synonymous with prisoner resistance.
—Heather Ann Thompson, history professor at the University of Michigan, (Jacobin, 9/9)

Fifty-three  years ago, Black imprisoned workers led their white and Latin counterparts in a rebellion against the racist deplorable conditions at Attica prison in northwestern New York State. Today prisoners nationwide are organizing once again. Capitalism is a never-ending disaster. For workers, students and prisoners worldwide only communism is a solution: a world without racism, sexism or imperialist wars.
Concentration camp

In September of 1971, the conditions at Attica prison in the northwest corner of New York State were brutal. Inmates suffered from starving bellies, untreated infections, falling teeth, lack of toilet paper, and showers only once a week often without any soap (Jacobin, 9/9). With about 2,300 inmates, Attica was overcrowded to almost twice its capacity. The prisoner population was 54 percent Black, 9 percent Puerto Rican and 37 percent white. All 383 guards were white.

So the prisoners organized. They read Marx and Frantz Fanon. They formed the Attica Liberation Faction uniting different political groupings. They had educational rap sessions in the prison yard. They put together demands for improved conditions and sent them to state, city and prison officials. All demands for change by the prisoners were ignored.

Rebellion

After a prisoner fought back against a brutal guard, the prison bosses ordered a crackdown that led to a violent fight. The prison guard was beaten and eventually died. But a small group of more politicized prisoners immediately changed it into an organized rebellion. Meetings were held, demands were discussed and formulated, and leaders were chosen. A central part of the prison called Times Square was fortified. They chose a negotiation committee. They figured out how to feed 1,300 people and obtained medical care for those most in need.

Rockefeller’s fascist savagery

But New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller and various authorities were not interested in negotiations. They had a two-pronged racist strategy: spread vicious lies about the rebellious prisoners and viciously attack them as soon as possible. Both the media and various officials spread racist lies about supposed atrocities committed by the rebels, including slitting the throats of the hostages. The attack by the state involved hundreds of state cops, National Guardsmen, and both current and former prison guards. They were handed weapons from a supply truck without regard to serial numbers and they had their own personal weapons.

Road to mass incarceration

The attack started with a gas that incapacitated the rebelling prisoners. This was followed by fifteen minutes of indiscriminate shooting that slaughtered 29 prisoners and 9 guards. After the prison was totally secured, four more prisoners-leaders of the rebellion- were hunted down and killed. That was followed by vicious beatings, torture and no medical care. Heather Ann Thompson: “In the aftermath is when the real brutality begins. The doctors are trying to help prisoners, while guards are dumping them off of stretchers, kicking them, urinating into wounds, making the most horrific scene unfold.” (Democracy Now, 7/9).

President Richard “Nixon repeatedly assured Rockefeller he did the right thing, because Attica was “the Blacks,” and part of a nationwide conspiracy by the communists and Black radicals to undermine [U.S.]” (truth-out, 9/9). Within a year, Rockefeller enacted a law that formed the seeds of the “war on drugs” (racist war on workers) operation.

Attica scared the bosses, and they reacted with more terrorization of the Black and Latin working class. In 1970, the year before Attica, there were nearly 200,000 people in prison. By 2015, that number was 2.3 million people, a 400 percent increase in the rate of incarceration (Five-Thirty-Eight, 2/12/16).

Attica is a symbol of working-class rebellion and viciously racist aftermath. Attica today means fightback against racist state terror.
Prisons can be a site of struggle and fightback. At the Kinross Correctional Facility in Michigan 400 prisoners protested today to commemorate Attica. And more are organizing again against deplorable prison conditions throughout the country. Nationwide protests are growing against racism and sexism. More than ever, we need to fight for communism to end these capitalist atrocities once and for all.

Chiapas: migrant caravan needs antiracist solidarity

A new multinational caravan of migrants has just left Chiapas to travel through Mexican territory and reach the border with the United States to see if they can cross. They are humble, hard working people, women and children full of dust and sweat, thirsty and hungry, many of them possibly sick, but all with  the same goal, to reach U.S. territory to have a better life and get a job to help the families they leave behind.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden signs an executive order to deport on the spot those who do not meet the requirements for asylum and other measures comparable to that of former President Donald Trump, whom he vehemently criticized when, during his term, he took horrible measures against migrants, especially those coming from Latin America, the Middle East and Asia.                         

We are at a point within the territory, with the arrival of hundreds of migrants who entered during this period  that most of them are in limbo, hundreds of them in shelters, others on the streets homeless without work and without a permit to work, so what do we do? What do our community organizations in which we are involved do to help our immigrant brothers and sisters?  There is a great silence. No one says anything; there are no actions, no calls for protest actions in favor of our brothers who are fleeing their countries, hoping to have a better future in the so-called land of liberty and freedom.

A land in which they are super-exploited and where bosses use lies that migrants steal jobs from Black and Latin who are already here. In this period in which they are scapegoating migrants to win electoral votes. Trump is threatening to carry out mass deportations and liberals quietly promise the same.

All this leads us to think and to assure that neither one party nor the other, that there is no lesser evil candidate. Regardless of who wins, it is a lose-lose  situation for our class siblings who are fleeing from the countries, the vast majority of which were former colonies, plundered and exploited by the colonizers. After centuries of slavery and exploitation, these countries are still suffering the horror of capitalism, imperialism and fascism that is exported from the developed capitalist countries,whose working class is also suffering the horror of exploitation and fascism of the bosses, who repress any sign of uprising and protests to ensure their political and economic interests.    

Therefore the only way to resolve this horror, is to organize and fight within community organizations, industries and wherever our Party can organize and grow, until we become a mass party, ready to lead the international working class to make  communist revolution   and establish workers’ power which will liquidate once and for all the borders that separate us, resolve all the needs of the working class and build a better world for all and where we will give the final burial to capitalism and  imperialism.
*****

Oppose “beautiful” (profitable) Bloomington

On July 17th, four comrades visited the Southside camps in Bloomington, Indiana. Located along the B-Line trail, these camps demonstrate the indomitable spirit of the most oppressed citizens in Bloomington. Community thrives even while this system does its utmost to destroy the spirit of the people. While the city claims to be the most progressive and liberal town in Southern Indiana, we see the true nature of Mayor KKKerry Thomson and the kkkops. Bloomington relies on the influx of 40,000 students to Indiana State University-Bloomington, marketed as the “most beautiful campus in the world” to make its profits. As such, the city must follow suit and make Bloomington as a whole “beautiful”. But, we know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the only thing a capitalist has eyes for is profit. Therefore, in order to make Bloomington as “beautiful” (profitable) as possible, the impoverished must be hidden from view. And so, before all the impressionable students come back to town, the City “cleans up town”. 

An eviction notice has been served and the Bloomington Pig Department will take action on August 3rd, but we will not let them do so in silence. From this park to the next, they are being told that they can’t be here, nor there. Meanwhile, more and more cheaply built, overpriced apartment complexes are built to hold more students, and generate more profit. This process is a continuation of the settler-colonial project called Amerikkka and is not dissimilar to the plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the rest of the occupied territories.

We must come together in defense of the oppressed masses of the world. This depraved system must not be allowed to continue its violent attacks on our communities! Comrades, we can only defend the people through a violent destruction of the capitalist system that keeps us in chains. There is no time left to discuss long term strategy. We must be prepared for what is to come!

CHALLENGE Response: A red salute for your efforts to build solidarity and political struggle with displaced workers in your area. What is happening is undoubtedly part of a broader trend of violent state oppression by the world's capitalist ruling classes, and as you claim, it cannot be any other way as long as the profit system exists. The solution remains to build a mass international Progressive Labor Party that openly fights for communist revolution. Not just in defense of the oppressed masses, but a revolutionary movement led by those most attacked by racist capitalism and imperialism, particularly Black workers around the world.

To build a communist movement and PLP, we must understand the dialectical connection between short-term and long-term political strategies and never sacrifice one at the expense of the other. CHALLENGE looks forward to hearing more about the struggle in Bloomington and ways other workers and students can support this struggle!

*****

MTA: Racist speed-up & terror tactics kill worker

During a recent training practical for new train operators in New York City, a student train operator collapsed. He was taken to a nearby hospital where officials later pronounced him dead.

This, however, wasn’t just some tragic isolated incident. The racist environment surrounding the majority Black and Latin workers for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), the agency that operates the city’s trains and buses, undoubtedly played a role.

Before the operator collapsed while taking the practical, he told supervisors he was feeling very anxious. 

While his cause of death has not been revealed as of this writing, many transit workers who have endured the stressful training practices the MTA forces its new hires through can relate to how he felt before his exam.

From the beginning of training throughout, the focus is on scaring new train operators through fear based tactics. They’re constantly told they will be severely punished or even fired for the smallest infractions--a complete lie. Some supervisors tell new recruits that half of them will not make it. 

This is completely normalized as, “It’s just how it is down here.”

Couple that experience with the MTA bosses cutting training time to push more operators out faster, due to the Covid hiring freeze THEY implemented, and giving a signal exam train operators are supposed to get a perfect score on (or possibly be fired), and you have a recipe for incidents like this worker’s passing.

This shift in the training process represents MTA bosses’ efforts to speed up train service off the back of their workforce, our lives and health  be damned. During the pandemic, the MTA shortened train operator training by seven to eight weeks. 

TWU Local 100, the union that represents NYC transit workers, is in bed with the bosses, and has done little to nothing to address the way train operators are trained, or treated on the job. They have also worked with management to force more train trips into the operating schedules, leaving operators with less recovery time between their runs. While operating in and of itself isn’t necessarily physically demanding, it can be mentally strenuous. Operators have to be mindful of safe operation to ensure passengers aren’t thrown around the train, signal and track conditions on the route, and passengers on the station platforms as well.   Several things can go wrong if we aren’t paying complete attention to the task at hand. Consequently, sufficient breaks after each trip are necessary to properly reset before making the next departure to the other terminal. Less break time leads to an increased likelihood of making mistakes, and receiving “plantation justice” (a term some in Transit have coined for the racist punishments MTA workers receive for infractions).

The job environment can put an immense strain on workers’ bodies. Many of our crew rooms are filthy and hazardous, with conditions such as mold and even silica dust. Many die shortly after retirement. It’s not uncommon for those who survive to suffer from ailments such as carpal tunnel, shoulder issues and knee problems in later years. The transit bosses will give their crocodile tears over this young worker literally getting stressed to death, then continue on with business as usual.

It’s clear that MTA workers and all workers need a better alternative that takes our lives into consideration, and that’s one where we don’t generate profit for the ruling class, but one where we collectively work to better the world for one another-communism.
*****

Book review doesn’t mention I’m in PLP!

The review of Anti-Racism as Communism left out two important things. The author is proud to have been a member of Progressive Labor Party for 52+ years. The book is dedicated to two collectives from whom I came to my understanding of racism and how to end it: the students I have known at Chicago State University and my comrades in the Progressive Labor Party.
*****

Israeli fascists continue murdering Palestinian civilians

Al Jazeera, 7/27–The Israeli military has issued new evacuation orders in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis that further expand into an area where displaced Palestinians have been forced to shelter while killing dozens in an attack on a hospital in the centre of the enclave…The Khan Younis invasion displaced at least 180,000 Palestinians in the first four days since it was launched, with many having to move without their belongings, according to the United Nations…an air attack killed many people inside a home in the area on Saturday morning before the Israeli military ordered the latest mass evacuation…Israeli artillery shelling has been targeting the town of Bani Suheila, east of Khan Younis…The Israeli military launched a huge attack on a field hospital established in a school in Deir el-Balah, killing at least 30 Palestinians and wounding dozens, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health… three missiles were fired from fighter jets at the Khadija School…The enclave’s civil defence organisation said the school, the latest of many to be hit this month alone, was housing 4,000 displaced Palestinians…

D.R. Congo workers suffer from foreign interventions

Foreign Affair, 7/26–Last year, the conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo turned 30. It is a grim milestone…the war in Congo has excelled at evading international recognition…Today, more than seven million Congolese are displaced, more than at any other time in history, and yet the war still barely features in global media…There are more than 100 different armed actors fighting in the east, most of which are pursuing separate ends. The M23 itself, however, is easier to grapple with. The group is largely funded and trained by Rwanda, which sees the organization as a way to project power and gain access to Congo’s resources…Congolese officials have also invited Burundi, Malawi, South Africa, and Tanzania to send troops into its eastern region for assistance. The conflict, in other words, is transforming from a low-grade internal clash to an expanding interstate and communal war.

U.S. and Russian bosses prepare for direct conflict

The Guardian, 7/28–Vladimir Putin has warned the US that if Washington deploys long-range missiles in Germany from 2026, Russia will station similar missiles within striking distance of the west. The US would start deploying long-range fire capabilities in Germany in 2026…The US’s “episodic deployments” are in preparation for longer-term stationing of such capabilities that will include SM-6 and Tomahawk cruise missiles and developmental hypersonic weapons that have a longer range than current capabilities in Europe, Washington and Berlin said.
In a speech...Putin told the US it risked triggering a cold war-style missile crisis with the move. “The flight time to targets on our territory of such missiles, which in the future may be equipped with nuclear warheads, will be about 10 minutes,” Putin said. “We will take mirror measures to deploy, taking into account the actions of the United States, its satellites in Europe and in other regions of the world.”

War preparations continue in Asia

Nikkei Asia, 7/29–Foreign ministers from Australia, India, Japan and the U.S. stressed unity and vowed to expand collaboration on cyber and maritime security in the Indo-Pacific at a meeting in Tokyo on Monday, which U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken hailed as "a moment of unprecedented strategic alignment”...The statement did not directly name China, but came as Beijing launched a series of military drills in the seas around Taiwan in May, and stepped up joint military activities with Russia in the South China Sea earlier this month. "This is a moment of unprecedented strategic alignment among our four countries," Blinken said…

The four-way gathering followed a "two-plus-two" session between foreign and defense ministers from Japan and the U.S. on Sunday. The two nations agreed to closer collaboration between their defense forces in the Indo-Pacific -- including a revamping of how U.S. forces are organized in Japan -- and a renewed bilateral focus on Japan's southwestern islands located close to Taiwan.

Shots fired! The attempted assassination of the once and possibly future Racist-in-Chief Donald Trump is just the latest signpost of  fast-rising fascism and nearing world war.  As imperialist China advances at the U.S. rulers’ expense,  the Republican Party stands united behind an incoherent, incompetent grifter with no principle beyond his own self-interest. The Democrats are fractured over Genocide Joe Biden’s public displays of mental and physical decrepitude. Together, the two parties are exposing the capitalist bosses’ desperation, decay, and unbridgeable divisions.  

In short, the U.S. ruling class is a hot mess. Their cherished liberal democracy–based on voting and the myth of workers’ “freedoms”—is on life support. Their one way to check their death spiral, even temporarily, is to resort to fascism–to more aggressive state terror and direct control by the capitalists themselves. We cannot vote our way out of fascism; we must fight back to destroy it. Progressive Labor Party fights both the open fascists backing Trump (see page 1) and the liberal fascists of finance capital (see letters on page 6) while organizing to arm the working class with the most advanced ideas. In this period of unsustainable instability, the liberals remain our greatest threat because of their ability to declaw the ferocity of our class and mislead us into a fascist movement. From the United States to South America to the Middle East to Africa to Asia to Europe to the Caribbean, workers need a real solution to the perpetual crisis of capitalism. Communism is what you are looking for. 

Failing empire splits the ruling class

At no other time in history has the U.S. empire faced so many rivals—China, Russia, Iran, North Korea—with so much military and economic might. Arch-rival China is on a clear trajectory to become the next dominant imperialist superpower. The U.S. is a shell of the country that dominated the globe after World War II. The old U.S.-led “rules-based international order doesn’t really exist anymore…China is…building its own alternative order. As the old order unravels, these overlapping blocs are competing over what will replace it” (Foreign Affairs, 6/18). To prevail in a profit-driven system, the capitalist bloodsuckers have only one choice: world war.

Meanwhile, two competing factions of U.S. bosses are deeply divided over the role the country will play in the world. On one side are the finance capitalists, represented by the Democratic Party, whose profits are tied to controlling international markets and the flow of oil. This wing historically has controlled the government and state apparatus, and has been more willing to sacrifice some short-term profits for long-term gains.

On the other side are the Small Fascists, represented by the Republican Party and Trump (see box for details), who are reluctant to contribute in the name of U.S. global supremacy. Case in point: In 1944, the U.S. bosses were willing to pay 94 percent in taxes (CBS News, 12/7/11). In 2018, the Small Fascists cried about a 23 percent tax rate (New York Times, 5/3).

Both of these gangs are huge threats to the working class. We call the finance capitalists Big Fascists for their bigger money, bigger weapons (at least for now) and bigger danger to mislead and disarm our class. We call the more domestic-oriented wing Small Fascists—although, if given the opportunity, they’d have an equal capacity for state terror and racist and nationalist violence.

Over the last half-century, as imperialist China began to threaten their dominance, the Big Fascists’ suffered a series of humiliating defeats, from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Now the liberal rulers are trapped by their own contradictions. On the one hand, they need to scapegoat groups of workers—chiefly immigrants—to keep our class divided and deflect blame from the bosses’ dysfunctional system. At the same time,  they need a multiracial mass military willing to sacrifice their lives for a fading empire that makes workers’ lives unlivable. 

Small Fascists encroach on state power 

Amid the rotting of U.S. imperialism, the Small Fascists saw a window of opportunity. What began as a fringe Tea Party movement after the 2008 economic crisis has now penetrated into every pillar of the state, from Congress to the courts to the White House. Trump instigated a rebellion after losing the 2020 election, and sounds ready to do the same on a larger scale this time around. The Supreme Court, packed with Trump appointees, has ruled that presidents have impunity to do whatever they want. The bosses appear to have passed the point where they can settle their differences without blood on the ground.

The vile Trump—sexual predator, self-serving felon, born-again hypocrite—is of course a danger to the working class.  But he’s also a problem for the bosses. He has no coherent strategy to advance the interests of the U.S. ruling class or even the Small Fascist wing. Like Biden, he reflects U.S. decay. Even so, the Small Fascists have successfully hijacked the Republican Party, which seems far more disciplined and unified than the Democrats at the moment. 

In his best-selling Hillbilly Elegy, Trump’s running mate, the brazen opportunist J.D. Vance, blames the white working class for their problems under capitalism. He’s also called for cutting off welfare benefits (states.aarp.org, 9/8/22). Meanwhile, Trump's white racist base is gaining traction among some Black and brown workers (NYT Times, 7/15) who have seen little but growing inequality and the gutting of social services under Big Fascist rule. 

Riding with Biden into fascism

As the pathetic election spectacle in the U.S. sputters on, it’s the Big Fascists who continue to slaughter our class in Gaza. After tens of thousands of survivors had fled to Al-Mawasi, a designated “safe zone,”

Israel’s Nazi bosses used made-in-U.S. bombs in one of the bloodiest atrocities of a nine-month genocide (NY Times, 7/15). The current official death toll in Gaza is nearly 40,000. Every hour, the U.S.-Israel fascists drop 42 bombs, destroy 12 buildings, kill 15 people and injure 25 more(OCHA, 11/1/23). 

Genocide Joe boasts about the “toughest set of reforms to secure” the U.S.-Mexico border “ever in history” (CNN, 2/23). He’s used his Border Patrol gestapo to match Trump’s deportation numbers (Immigration Policy Institute, 6/27). But Biden’s concentration camps have triggered little mass protests, no rebellions in the streets.  Compared to 2020, the working class has “cooled down,” just as Biden’s Big Fascist masters hoped, though the movement against the Gaza genocide is a glimmer. 

There is no lesser evil among capitalist bosses—only evil. No matter which murdering monster occupies the White House, we can’t afford to be complacent. Workers, youth, and soldiers are losing their illusions about U.S. democracy. Those who supported the likes of  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were gravely disappointed by her defense of genocidal Zionism. Those who joined the largest protest movement in world history after the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery,  and Breonna Taylor got crumbs in return. But without organized fightback and communist consciousness, disillusionment can turn into isolation and aimless, suicidal violence, as we saw with Thomas Crooks. Cynicism is not the answer.

Fascists on the attack, we fight them back!

The bosses will have you think that the only choice we have is between open fascists and liberal fascists. But there is always another way: communism. 

Progressive Labor Party has long warned of deepening splits among the bosses, of rising fascism and possible civil war. But communists must do more than warn workers; they must also prepare workers to fight back. A mass, unified, multiracial working class is the one thing the bosses cannot control—and cannot overcome. 

We can't predict when or where the next world war will begin or how the devastation will play out. So, friends, what can we do? We can share this editorial with our folks and cultivate deep political and personal relationships with more of our class siblings. We can dare to defy our local bosses by uniting with other workers for what's in our best interests. We can strive to motivate everyone around us to commit to fight like a communist for life. Progressive Labor Party doesn’t have the numbers to turn the guns around—yet. But what we do today—and what we refuse to do—counts. Fight fascism! Choose the only way out of the hellscape of capitalism–choose communism!

Define to fight it - Information Box

Capitalists compete by any means necessary. Much like smaller criminal gangs, different groups of capitalists battle one another to secure territory, resources, and exploitable labor–the basis of their profits.They have created the state as a mechanism to manage and protect this ruthless profit-driven system. Through laws, police, prisons, elections, the military, schools, the media, and other institutions, the bosses have built a dictatorship to keep themselves in power—and keep the working class out of power. 

Fascism is a stage of late capitalism in crisis where the liberal democratic veil peels away to reveal a rotting dictatorship. The bosses use state terror to discipline their own class and enforce compliance by the working class–both essential conditions for waging global war. Fascism is marked by more direct and centralized rule, with intensified racism, sexism, and nationalism. 

The Big Fascists are the dominant finance capitalists, principally the multinational banks and oil companies (JPMorganChase, ExxonMobil). They’re trying to build a multiracial, patriotic coalition to back U.S. imperialism and protect their far-flung profits. This is the wing that plays the drums of World War III. 

The Small Fascists are mostly domestically oriented capitalists, spearheaded by the Koch, Mercer, DeVos, and Coors families, along with Richard Mellon Scaife, Harry and Lynde Bradley, John Olin, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch and a cast of other billionaires. They want to cut taxes for short-term profits and are reluctant to invest in costly ground wars to defend the global U.S. empire. Their agenda includes a racist gutting of social services at home and a retreat from U.S. imperialist alliances, including NATO. 

Violence, a tool of the capitalist state - Information Box

Violence is part and parcel of the capitalist system. As CHALLENGE goes to press, the motives of 20-year-old Thomas Crooks are unclear. Whether this was an act of lone-wolf vigilantism or one backed by either side of the U.S. ruling class, it’s clear that both the Small and Big Fascists, cynical opportunists who they are, will exploit the incident for votes. 

Before the blood dried on Trump’s ear, all shades of Democrats, from so-called socialist Bernie Sanders to Nancy Pelosi, quickly tweeted that “violence has no place in our democracy.” This is the same U.S. democracy that was built through genocide and enslavement. It’s the same democracy that spawned the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow, that has lynched, deported, and incarcerated our class, that threw  workers of Japanese descent into concentration camps, that terrorized Muslim workers after 9/11—and that’s just within the U.S. borders. The Big Fascists became the world’s biggest gangsters through violence on the daily. 

But responding to organized state violence with acts of individual violence can only hurt the working class. To defeat the capitalist bosses, workers need mass, organized violence. We need communist revolution.